UK Slaps Sanctions On $20B Crypto Black Market Tied To Southeast Asia Scam Rings

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis puts the number at close to $20 billion — the estimated volume of dirty money that flowed through Xinbi, a Chinese-language crypto marketplace, between 2021 and 2025. Now the UK government wants to shut it down.

Scam Hubs At The Center Of It All

Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office announced Thursday that it has imposed sweeping sanctions on Xinbi, a platform accused of providing crypto-based services, scam tools, and other criminal resources to bad actors across Southeast Asia.

The move freezes any UK-linked assets tied to the platform and bans British banks, crypto firms, and citizens from doing any business with it — financial or otherwise.

Xinbi is not just a payment processor for criminals. Reports indicate the platform sits at the center of a web of interconnected illicit operations, many of them tied to scam compounds scattered across Southeast Asia — operations that have drawn global attention for their use of trafficked workers to run large-scale fraud schemes targeting victims worldwide.

Two individuals were also sanctioned in the action. Thet Li is accused of running the international financial network of the Prince Group, a Cambodia-based company tied to large-scale crypto fraud. Hu Xiaowei is alleged to have worked within that same financial network and to have links to #8 Park, a scam compound connected to the Prince Group.

Cutting Off The Money Pipeline

Chainalysis, which provided blockchain data supporting the sanctions, described the move as targeting the scam ecosystem’s on- and off-ramps — the critical pathways that allow criminal operators to move money in and out of the legitimate financial system.

According to the firm, Xinbi acted as a commercial hub, offering payment processing and marketing services to fraud operators who needed reliable infrastructure to run their schemes.

The FCDO said the sanctions are designed to isolate Xinbi from the broader crypto system, disrupting its ability to send and receive transactions. In practice, that means cutting the platform off from the exchanges, wallets, and financial services it depends on to function.

What stood out in the UK government’s statement was its language. Officials drew a clear line between legitimate crypto activity and criminal misuse of the technology — a distinction regulators have not always been quick to make publicly.

That framing matters to the industry. For years, critics have pointed to crypto’s role in fraud and money laundering as evidence the entire sector needs to be reined in. The Financial Action Task Force estimates that between two and 5% of global GDP passes through traditional financial networks as laundered funds each year.

Data from Chainalysis puts illicit crypto transactions at below 1% of total activity on-chain — a figure the industry frequently cites in its defense.

Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView